Five other workers managed to flee in time with minor injuries from the coal deposit, located in the northern region of Coahuila
Without rest, night and day. This is how the rescue teams in Mexico work to locate alive a dozen miners who were trapped on Wednesday afternoon (early Thursday morning in Spain) by a landslide in a coal deposit in the northern municipality of Sabinas, in the State of Coahuila. Five other workers managed to flee in time, with minor injuries.
“The accident occurred when the workers, in the course of their excavation activities, ran into an adjoining area full of water, which caused a flood when it collapsed, trapping a group of miners,” explained Laura Velázquez, national coordinator of Civil protection. For his part, the Undersecretary of Defense, Agustín Radilla, specified that a total of 230 troops participate in the rescue operation, as well as four canine units, six special forces divers and two urban ambulances.
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, showed his sadness at what happened. “We hope to find them safe,” he said in a brief message on Twitter while the rescuers at the site were carrying out drainage and pumping work on the water from the three collapsed wells, while trying to locate the place where the group would be found and how to access.
The mine began operations last January “and to date there is no history of complaints of any type of anomaly,” the Ministry of Labor and the Coahuila government said in a joint note. In this region, bordering the US, however, tragedies of this type are common. The most recent occurred in June, in the municipality of Múzquiz, when a flood broke the roof and walls of another mine, where seven miners were trapped. None survived.
The most serious incident occurred in February 2006 at the Pasta de Conchos mine, also in Coahuila, where 65 workers died in an accident and only two bodies were recovered. Since then, more than 100 deaths have been recorded in the area.
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